Child: Who is the pale naked guy in that picture?

Parent: Rudolf Nureyev.

Child: Who?

Parent: He was a ballet danseur that defected from the Soviet Union.

Child: From the where?

Do you enjoy reading encyclopedias or history books and/or have you been solicited to join the ranks of the AARP (or even know what AARP stands for)? If you do, then you might be interested in the multitude of portraits of political conservatives and radicals or a limited number of celebrity relics captured by editorial photographer Richard Avedon since the 1950s until he died in 2004. The new exhibition Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power now on display at the San Diego Museum of Art features approximately 150 images of the news makers and powerbrokers that the photographer created for magazine features and books.

This exhibit includes several examples of Mr. Avedon’s usual pictorial fare of popular celebrities but wholly avoids fashion. Celebrity standards like the photo of gray haired Charlie Chaplin grinning while holding his right and left forefingers at his temples to mimic a smiling devil and the photo of the thin, waif-like Bob Dylan standing on a rain soaked Central Park sidewalk make their requisite appearance. A powerfully dramatic image of Marion Anderson singing as the wind sweeps her long hair is also included.

Primarily this exhibit is composed of photography focusing on 1960s and ‘70s intelligentsia, politicians, and powerbrokers: images of the influential Malcolm X and Reverend Billy Graham or characters like George Wallace of Alabama. Other photos document the Chicago Seven, the Saigon Mission Council, or George Lincoln Rockwell along with some of his American Nazi Party followers circa 1963. These types of figures created newspaper headlines during the ‘60s and ‘70s, but today most of these images will be perceived by most viewers under 50-years of age as esoteric at best.

After a stint taking photos for Merchant Marine identification cards during World War II, Avedon was able to use his photographic skills documenting fashions for the magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Over the years he also worked for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vogue, and eventually The New Yorker. Using his influence from the style industry, he also branched into portraiture for feature articles on individuals as well. Known for his jarring and innovative fashion and advertising work, Mr. Avedon’s feature portraiture returned to his identification card roots evolving into a quite spare style.

In order to focus solely on the person he was photographing, Avedon would place his subjects in front of a simple gray or white paper backdrop. Ironically, Avedon had a penchant for manipulating his sitters to obtain an artificial likeness of his subject—an enhanced and perhaps fictional visual likeness.

A mythic tale of Mr. Avedon’s manipulating his sitters consists of a lie he supposedly told two devoted dog fanciers. While photographing them, Avedon deceived the two by telling them that he had just witnessed a defenseless dog being hit by a car in order to evoke the couple’s wincing shock captured in the photo. Included in this exhibition is that 1957 Avedon photograph of two devoted dog fanciers—the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the Duke was the English king who abdicated the throne to marry an American divorcee just prior to WWII). As you view this couple’s portrait, you are either viewing a picture of an unknown couple with odd expressions on their faces or you are able to recognize that couple as the traumatized Duke and Duchess of Windsor; it depends on your generation in all probability. Therein is the problem with many of Avedon’s pictures, as is the case with many other photographers of timely celebrity. You have to know and care about the identity of the portrait’s subject and, perhaps, the story behind the picture itself to get much out of many of these types of photographs. Because fame and infamy are too often intriguing for only a specific moment, a lot of images in this exhibition seem irrelevant and dated.

Anything can be called art, but only great art’s appeal endures. Mr. Avedon did create many enduring works throughout his career. Included here are good examples, such as a 1964 post presidential portrait of a smiling Dwight Eisenhower looking frail—an image antithetical to the invincible leader of the World War II Allied forces we tend to remember from history. Striking, too, is the image of “The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution” (1963), a collective portrait of dowager matrons still clinging to some arcane vestige of influence, who all wear ball gowns with sashes and bitter looking expressions of regal disdain. Another lasting image is a portrait of elderly William Casby, a former slave from Algiers, Louisiana, with his sparse white hair, defiant jaw, and sympathetic eyes, an image that French author Roland Barthes appreciated enough to ruminate at length upon in his influential book on photography, Camera Lucida.

An analogy for this whole exhibit is the included series of photographs called The Family, which Mr. Avedon completed for Rolling Stone magazine during our nation’s 1976 Bicentennial—a collection of 69 portraits considered at the time to be an encyclopedic look at the most influential Americans of that year as determined by Mr. Avedon and his Rolling Stone editors. The series was intriguing and timely in 1976; but, today with over thirty years of hindsight, it becomes a time capsule relic with only a few of the images having lasting appeal.

Originating from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this exhibition, curated by Paul Roth and Frank Goodyear, relies on an encyclopedic amassing of Mr. Avedon’s images. Because of sheer volume of images, you have difficulty finding the photographer’s exquisite photographic specimens while getting lost in this dense forest of over 150 images. A better eye for cropping out the dead wood might have better served this particular focus exhibition of Mr. Avedon’s work.

Still and all, viewing this exhibit might give your brain a good workout as you attempt to give context to all the faces and names as you await your next dreaded AARP solicitation.